A characteristic of a beamforming technology is in controlling the direction of a beam, and it distinguishes users by their positions, so that multi-user can reuse the same time and frequency resources. Small antenna distance (0.5 λ) and spacious suburban scene are fit to apply the beamforming technology.
The beamforming technology uses antenna array structure to obtain the beam in a characteristic direction, so that it can obtain obvious beam energy gain, and the feature of the technology can be used to promote cell coverage, decrease system interference and increase system capacity, at the same time it can also improve reliability of links, peak rate and effectively improve the performance of edge users.
Because an MIMO technology can effectively improve channel capacity, it becomes a very attractive technology in an LTE (long term evolution) research.
In multi-user MIMO mode, it is possible to design beamforming direction, control the concrete form of beam pattern, distinguish signals from multi-user and remove interference between users by designing proper weight vector of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas. However, in existing single-user beamforming technology, one data stream can simultaneously be sent only by one beam, so throughputs of user and system are lower.